Children love to express themselves artistically using a wide range of art supplies such as crayons, markers, pens, pencils, chalks, brushes, rollers, sprays, stamps, spin and drip systems, cutting devices and glues, for example, as well as various other art supplies. Such art supplies often cause concern from parents due to the potential for misuse, ingestion, injury and accidents.
Unsupervised, young children are known to take markers, crayons, paints, pens and other art implements, stray away from the acceptable writing surface, such as a child's desk, easel, or the like, and draw on other surfaces in the home. Whether intentional or not, drawing, painting, or the like on a non-approved surface, such as a wall, can be very destructive and costly to repair. A single unsupervised incident can cause thousands of dollars in damage to a home. Thus, these art supply items are often locked away or hidden until such time as a caregiver can be directly involved in supervising their use.
Since children's motor skills are not fully developed, they also accidentally color or paint outside the paper and onto a table, for example, also causing damage and mess requiring time consuming clean up. In addition, curious children sometimes put their art and writing materials in their mouths and ingest the materials or mark up their face, hands, clothes, bodies or other siblings.
Due to these and other potential misuses, caregivers typically stay within close proximity to and maintain close supervision of the child using art and writing materials to ensure these items are used properly. If they do not, they risk the consequences. It is also noted that older siblings capable of using marking implements properly must not leave these items unattended when a toddler is in the home for fear that they may take one and write on various surfaces in the house thereby causing extensive damage.
Thus, in a typical home, for example, the use of traditional art and writing materials is restricted to supervised times. Since many parents are often busy with work, caring for other children and doing chores, art and writing time is often very limited. Such time restrictions may limit the child's artistic, creative, language and motor skill development. Other, older siblings who are capable of using art supplies safely without such supervision may also be restricted in their use, since they may not return all their art supplies to a secure location when finished or may allow a younger sibling to take and utilize their art supplies in a destructive or dangerous manner.
Another problem relates to marker caps. Young children may attempt to swallow such caps. Also, children are known to have difficulty taking caps off and putting them back on. When putting a cap on a marker, children often misalign the cap and the tip and get marker on their hands. Sometimes, they put the open markers back on the writing surface which can damage it. These open markers can roll off the table and damage the floor if they fall. Children can also lose caps, put the wrong color cap on the marker or simply do not put caps back on after use. If a cap is not put on a marker, or in the case of a marker which twists open and closed, if a marker is not properly twisted closed, the marker may dry out and become unusable, resulting in the parent having to prematurely purchase more markers. Some markers offer push button or twist retraction, but they still require manual retraction and are still subject to being left open when not in use. These twist open markers can be very messy if a child grips the tip area when attempting to extend the tip, as the tip then protrudes directly into their hand or hands. Other items like pens, stamps, brushes, rollers, glues, cutting devices and other art supplies may have similar or their own unique problems.
Many children's products attempt to address safety issues. Waterbased pens, edible materials, clear inks, erasable markers, paints, pens, and electronic and non-ink based writing tablets employ a variety of techniques to attempt to deal with such problems. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for the enjoyment, feel, and developmental benefits of using real art supplies, and children love to use the same items as their older siblings and parents do.